Barca could be a Bridge too far

Many great minds in football — and Alan Shearer — have struggled to explain how Chelsea have gone from being serial losers to serial winners in the space of just a few weeks, from a team which was written off as, appropriately enough, almost pensionable, to one which can now look forward to Champions League and FA Cup semi-finals.

But I quite liked Brazilian midfielder Ramires’ stab at solving the conundrum this week.

“It’s difficult to explain the change in our fortunes,” he conceded, “but we have begun to realise we are a great team with great players.”

Which begs the question: what on earth did they think they were before that? I’m reminded of that lovely yarn about a Partick Thistle player who was laid out flat after a clash of heads.

The physio came on and gave him a quick once over before turning to the bench with grave news about the extent of his concussion.

“He doesn’t even know who he is,” he reported. “Great,” replied the gaffer, “tell him he’s Pele and to get on with it.”

Ramires’ explanation for Chelsea’s turn-around likewise suggests that Roberto Di Matteo may have resorted to hypnotism in a bid to convince his broken squad that a run of just five wins in 16 games, culminating in the defeat by West Brom which signalled the departure of Andre Villas-Boas, had been nothing but an illusion.

“Repeat after me: we will beat Napoli, we will beat Benfica and we will beat Bar...well, okay, let’s not push this too far.”

Or maybe it’s all nothing more mysterious than proof of the adage that a change is as good as a rest. Certainly, Chelsea badly needed an alternative to poor AVB, a man whose stock fell even more sharply than the team’s during the eight months he lasted in what was meant to be a three-year project.

It’s hard to believe that, a little over 12 months ago, a few of us were in the Aviva Stadium press conference room, suitably impressed to be in the presence of a man who was then in the process of doing the quadruple with Porto, a Europa League final triumph giving Irish journalists a chance to tell future generations that we too had engaged first-hand with the new Mourinho.

“I am not the Special One,” AVB laughingly protested around that time. “Maybe I will be the shit one.”

Oh dear.

We haven’t heard much from AVB since he departed west London with heavy heart and an even heavier wallet, but that hasn’t stopped Andrew Kennedy on Goal.com wittily imagining how the man himself might mount a case for the defence.

“The high line was not the undoing of my Chelsea back line, it was in fact a ‘misconception turned into opinion-making’ (see page 37 of the enclosed appendix for detailed explanation) that was confused with the ‘medium block’ style of defending. The use of the medium block is for another day, but I can tell you when I used the high line, it left us exposed to the ‘horizontal shift’. This is an attacking move employed by the opposition when your defence presses the ball from the halfway line and they cunningly break into the gaping space left in behind Jose Bosingwa.”

Ah, very good, and like all successful satire, not a million miles removed from the reality of a man who, by the end of his time at the Bridge, had begun to sound alarmingly like the character in the gag who asks if anal retentive has a hyphen.

Of course, AVB never crossed the white line to contribute to all those shambolic Blues performances, which suggests that the Chelsea players were asking not what they could do for the manager but what the manager couldn’t do for them.

Di Matteo has clearly restored unity to the camp, and all credit to the caretaker and his team for rising to the challenge. But rumours of a full-blown resurrection are likely to prove premature. Having rightly earned plaudits for their win in Lisbon, Chelsea almost reverted to AVB type at Stamford Bridge, coming within a hair’s breadth of going out.

Barely masked by the final whistle ecstasy was the reality that, for long spells, Pablo Aimar had almost threatened to take Chelsea apart single-handedly — and if the veteran could do that, one shudders at the thought of what lacerating damage young Messi might inflict on the Blues.

Of course, anything can happen in 90 minutes, as both Chelsea and Barcelona will have cause to remember, with wildly differing emotions, from that juggernaut clash at the Bridge, three years ago, a game I was lucky enough to see in the flesh. But while Chelsea were left to do some prolonged seething, Barca went on to imperiously dismantle Manchester United in Rome and then repeated the dose at Wembley two years later.

So, yes, anything can happen in 90 minutes but generally what happens is that Barcelona win. And with 180 minutes in store in the Champions League semi-final, and the second leg taking place at the Nou Camp, only the most hypnotically susceptible are likely to believe that Chelsea’s recovery can take them all the way to Munich.

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